Marika stepped into view. “Huntress Livia, you’re in Calypsos.”
“I know you….” She coughed heavily as if trying to clear something foul. “You’re little Mari. Balam’s daughter.”
“That’s right!” Marika said, sighing in relief.
“What happened?”
“You were poisoned by a bloodstone arrow.”
Her eyes widened, as if suddenly remembering a nightmare. With a weak, wobbly effort, she pulled the blanket from her shoulder. The wound remained, but the angry poisonous red lines were gone.
“I think you did it,” Pindor said at Jake’s side.
Jake felt a burst of relief and pride, but those black eyes still haunted him.
Livia seemed to find little comfort in her survival. If anything, her expression grew more anxious. Behind her eyes, Jake could see blank spaces of her memory filling, like water pouring into a glass, faster and faster.
Livia reached for Marika and snagged the edge of her sleeve. “How long have I…what day is it?”
Marika tried to calm her. “It’s the Spring Equinox.”
Livia reacted as if someone had stabbed her in the belly. “No!” She tried to pull herself up, but she was plainly too weak.
Marika knelt next to her.
Livia grabbed her again, more forcibly. “He’s coming.”
Jake jolted at her familiar words.
“The Skull King,” Livia pressed. “I captured a grakyl in the sucking bog of Fireweed. Before I slit his throat, he told me. Of a huge attack. To come on the night of the Equinox.”
The words of the huntress were full of dread and certainty.
“The Skull King comes this night!”
21
RUMOR OF WAR
A few minutes later, Jake stood out in the common room with Marika. “It’s probably just a nightmare,” he said, “but we should still get word to the Elders.”
Marika glanced over to where the dead stingtail still rested atop the table like some macabre centerpiece. It was a deadly reminder of the danger swirling around them. “But I still don’t understand,” she said. “The great temple protects our valley. Whether the danger is from sky or land. It has shielded us for hundreds and hundreds of years. The Skull King’s armies can’t get through.”
Jake pictured the monstrous grakyl writhing against that shield. He shrugged. “Like I said, the huntress may be mistaken. It could all just be a hallucination. No telling what sorts of nightmares were triggered by that poison.”
Marika sighed and grew more troubled. She was plainly scared to death about her father, but she knew her duty to Calypsos. She would not let her father down by dissolving into a weepy mess.
The narrow side door swung open. Bach’uuk returned with two taller Ur, a man and a woman. They were dressed in crudely sewn hides that still somehow looked neat and well trimmed.
Bach’uuk lifted an arm. “They will attend to Huntress Livia after we leave. Keep her safe.”
Pindor crossed out of the sickroom. “Are we ready? Huntress Livia is not happy to be left behind. Keeps trying to get out of bed. But I promised I would get word to my father.”
Bach’uuk spoke to the other Ur in his own tongue, a mix of guttural sounds combined with tongue clicks. The pair nodded and crossed toward the sickroom.
Pindor said, “The Olympiad must be over by now. All the Elders will be heading over to my father’s house for his traditional Equinox Night celebration.”
“Then that’s where we’ll meet them,” Marika agreed.
Jake and Pindor followed with Bach’uuk in tow. They needed him to tell his part of the story, about the strange shadow man.
Once out in the courtyard, Jake was shocked at how late it had become. The courtyard lay in deep twilight. Only the very top of the giant corkscrew tree was still in sunlight. The nesting dartwings were all huddled up there, soaking in the last warm rays of the day.
Off to the west, the sun had already half sunk into the jagged ridgeline. On the opposite side of the valley, a heavy full moon lay low on the horizon, ready to herald the coming night.
“It’ll be faster on foot!” Pindor called out, and waved toward the courtyard gates. “We’ll cut across High Street Park.”
Jake remembered the park from the trip to Bornholm two days ago. It lay outside the castle wall and overlooked the town below. They ran as the sun continued to sink.
As they exited the gates, sounds of revelry echoed up from the city: shouts, laughs, ringing of bells, blasts of horns, bleating of saurians. Wagons and chariots, festooned with lights, moved in the beginnings of a makeshift parade. Jake imagined that after sunset the entire place would be aglow.
Or at least Jake hoped it would be.
The four of them ducked into the park and allowed Pindor to lead them through the maze of gravel paths. Under the tight tangle of branches, night had already come to Calypsos.
As they hurried through the forest, they startled a pair of young lovers who were locked in an embrace. The pair quickly shoved apart and pretended to be extremely fascinated by the twist of tree roots near their bench.
Jake and the others continued onward. They flashed through a meadow of knee-high wildflowers as they sprinted by the lookout spot where they’d stopped yesterday. The coliseum in the distance was sunk fully into darkness.
Jake wondered where Kady was. Had she returned to Bornholm? If Calypsos was attacked, at least she was surrounded by some of the city’s best warriors. Still, Jake wished she were here with him now. Worry made him stumble.
Pindor misinterpreted his staggering step for exhaustion. “Not much farther,” he promised, pointing vaguely ahead.
After another two twists of the trail, the trees spread wider apart to reveal a manicured lawn. Shrubbery had been carved into fanciful spirals or perfect spheres. Atop a small hill rested a white house with a peaked roof and a double line of pillars fronting it. It reminded Jake of a mausoleum.
“That’s where I live,” Pindor said as he ran.
In preparation for the celebration, small tents had been set up in the garden, and long tables held mountains of food and pyramids of wine bottles.
People were already here, early arrivals of the larger party to come. They wandered in small groups or pairs. Pindor searched among them as he crossed the yard. Near a large statue of the god Apollo, someone lunged out and grabbed him.
“Pinny! Can you believe it?”
Pindor shook free and backed a step away. The attacker, an older boy, didn’t seem to notice. His face was flushed red with wine and excitement.